


Request

by witchway



Series: Xander On The Menu [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Because Spike is a vampire, Blood, Blood Drinking, First Times, M/M, Outdoor Sex, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:46:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29847255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchway/pseuds/witchway
Summary: by betareader requested Outdoor Sex and... well... who was I to say no??
Relationships: Spander, Spike/Xander, Xander Harris/Spike, Xander/Spike
Series: Xander On The Menu [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2151750
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	1. Outdoors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skargasm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skargasm/gifts).



Muddy knees, dirt on hands, the smell of earth and grass, but more importantly, blood dripping carelessly down his legs soaking into his pants, and Xander limping as fast as he could returning, calling out. This was the vision-smell that slammed into Spike like a fist as he immerged from his crypt. He had only let his boy rise, dress and leave him a few moments ago, and had just come up the ladder to opened up a bottle of scotch. Xander was gone, and Spike was ready to start drinking the hours away until his boy returned ( _Thundering Blazes, don’t think of him as “your boy.” He’s the slayer’s boy. He’s the demon-lady’s boy._ ) And look! Apparently the slayer’s boy was already returning.  
  
Xander yelped and started at the sudden appearance of Spike, even though they were only yards away from his crypt.

  
“You... heard me from back there?” he asked breathless as Spike moved with preternatural speed to his side. “It’s nothing, it’s stupid.” Xander was laughing, trying to reassure the stern-faced vampire with the frantic, worried hands that were trying to asses the damage, protect him from oncoming foes and carry him to safety all at the same time. “I’m all right, I tripped and fell and… shit. This is crazy but I didn’t want to waste it…..” He indicated the bleeding leg, visible through torn pants. “I just tripped and cut myself, but I didn’t want to waste it,” he told Spike, laughing at himself, because it seemed so crazy. “So do you want to HEY!!” Xander yelped as he found himself, in one movement, stripped of his bloodstained pants, naked from the waist down and laying on his back looking at the night sky, his bare ass lying on grass, his dangly bits suddenly exposed to the night air. He spoke no more. He knew talking was a little superfluous when his vampire was in this kind of mood (he also had to catch his breath.) He lay passively for a bit while Spike licked the length of the long scratch repeatedly, lapping up all the blood that had flowed down his the length of his calf, bathing each inch of the wound and erasing the pain, attaching himself to specific spots that were gushing the most. Then he pinched down severely with his thumb, making Xander wince as he expertly cut off the blood-flow, forcing the naughty veins to obey and quit leaking.  
  
All this, of course, Xander expected from experience. What he did NOT expect, however, was hearing his vampire groan with desire and attack with devouring mouth and ravaging tongue his bare…….kneecaps? “Um, Spike?” he asked, looking down, embarrassed at his condition (naked, outside? Without the protection of walls and privacy and…….walls? Is this even legal?) but what he saw only left him more baffled.  
  
The lover he had just left was minimally dressed, buttoned-down red shirt (unbuttoned) with no tee beneath, pants with no belt, no shoes. Spike was still in bed when Xander had left to sneak home and, obviously, had not yet fully dressed again. After Xander's fall, it made sense to come back to Spike, ASAP, when he realized that he was bleeding precious blood (although he could have just as easily limped home, cleaned up and gone to bed, maybe he just wanted an excuse to come back?). And now his lover, moaning and panting as if he were on his way to a massive orgasm, was licking Xander’s kneecaps, lapping up the moisture from the mud that had stained Xander's jeans when he landed hard after tripping and gashing himself over a broken headstone. He was covered in mud, (more accurately his pants were covered in mud, his bare legs were just wet.) He smelled of mud and dirt and grass and outdoors, and if the usually crisp-and-clean Vampire had a problem with that, well.... apparently he did not. Now the blood that had escaped his minor injury was forgotten, and unless he was severely mistaken, his lover seemed to be in the throes of ecstasy over his dirty knees. “Spike, what are you _doing_?” he tried to ask, but as soon as he spoke a clever hand was pressed between his inner thigh and his (exposed! feeling night air!) dangly bits and began to massage in a very distracting way, all while the tongue and mouth continued to kiss, suck on and lick every inch of skin on and around his wet and slightly muddy kneecaps.  
  
Spike’s hands were nothing to shake a stick at, (although why you would want to do something as asinine as shake a stick at Spike’s hands when you could be lying back and accepting a tender and erotic massage was beyond Xander.) Right now the hands (yes, both of them) seemed to be content to distract Xander with intimate caresses of both leg and scrotum while the mouth did……whatever it was doing. Xander tried to relax and enjoy the bizarre attention of both groin and kneecaps while ignoring the (very distracting!!) problem of bare-ass-lying on grass, of half-naked body exposed in the chill of the night air that would not let him forget that he was outside and not... well, inside.  
  
“Spike, please, take me……take me….take me back to your bed,” Xander found himself saying, and while he never dreamt he’d be whimpering those particular words to this particular Vampire, the words still made a whole lot of sense compared to what was happening now.  
  
“Lie back, just relax,” came the whispered refusal, but when Xander tried to push the amorous head away, Spike actually stopped his frantic ministrations and looked up. “Look….” he panted, pointing his own face at the sky. “See that wobbly bit, there? That’s Venus, look at Venus….” and then his head descended again, leaving the knees now and intent on licking an obscene path up Xander's inner thighs.  
  
“Spike, _please_ , this is a cemetery,”  
  
“What, you never made love with your lady in your own backyard?” Now Spike, breathless, was lifting and separating Xander’s knees, crawling in between them, and Xander gave himself up for lost.  
  
“No, I’ve never…. no….”  
  
But Spike just grinned. “Then I’m the first,” he said, obviously pleased, and bent over to swallow his boy whole.  
  
There were no walls for his cries to bounce off of, his moans were flung freely into the night. There was nothing to hold onto, and he was left to clutch at handfuls of earth and grass.  
  
“Spike, please don’t make me do this” he was whimpering, whilst all the time spreading his knees wider, pushing up into Spike’s mouth. He alternately closed his eyes tight to hide from the situation (we’re outside!) and opened them wide in surprise at the spectacular sensation provided by his very enthusiastic lover.  
  
Venus. Look at Venus. Look at the whole of the lovely sky, with steady planets and twinkling stars (to see the moon he would have to turn his head.) Looking at a starlit sky was a pleasure Xander never allowed himself any more – being outside at night was commonplace, but usually he was looking ahead of him for things dangerous, not relaxing and looking at things beautiful. He tried that now.  
  
He really tried.  
  
He had never had sex in his backyard, no, the only backyard he ever had belonged to his parents. But there had been Jessie’s backyard, with sleeping bags and tents made from bed sheets slung over tree branches – those were good memories. Sleepovers at Jessie’s house meant peaceful feelings and quiet homeliness, safe from the noise and confusion his own un-homley house. Sleeping bags with Jessie meant lying underneath the stars, just like this, and knowing you could talk about anything, _anything,_ and then lie quietly in the silence and feel free to dream.  
  
Dream. That was a good plan. Despite being spread out on the ground by his lover, in spite of Spike’s skilful fingers that were now fondling his scrotum (oh that’s a good trick, need to learn that trick) Xander could not finish this until he could relax, and he could not escape until he finished this. So Xander dreamed.  
  
Still feeling the cool grass under his bare ass, still feeling the night air on whatever dangly bits were not currently inside someone else’s mouth, still spread out under the vast night-time sky, Xander was being fucked, and expertly so, but not like this. In his fantasy _Spike was inside him, not gently and cautiously like before, but with the force and vigor of his most hidden fantasies, spreading him out in the open air, beneath the night sky, fucking him right into the dirt. But he was on top of him too, somehow penetrating him but also facing him in physics that might only work in fantasies. Xander was being taken and Spike was the taker, and suddenly being over-heard was the last thing on his mind._ Crying out loud, digging his fingers into the earth, he came. He came well, and he came loudly.  
  
Spike finished swallowing and rose with that wild, dangerous look on his face that Xander had come to expect, but not completely trust. It was that look that made him wonder if the chip was the only thing keeping the Vampire from finishing the meal by eating him up. It was the wild look of desire that made him think that Spike knew him (and wanted him) in ways that went way beyond the sex. It was the wild look he got in his eyes right before the third bite.  
  
The look passed (as it always did) and he was only Spike again, crawling like a panther to cover Xander’s body with his body and Xander’s mouth with his grinning mouth; a move that didn’t stop his boy from asking the obvious.  
  
“What ...... the FUCK ....... was that about?”  
  
The laugh was the low, evil kind that gave Xander shivers, even now. Spike pulled up and fetched jeans and underwear and proceeded to dress his pliant boy, all the while grinning and looking very satisfied with himself.  
  
“I could tell you, love, but then I’d have to kill you. Besides, you'd get jealous.”  
  
“Spike,” Xander complained as his jeans and boxers were pulled up to the waist and his jeans zipped shut, “You just ground virgin ass into the grass, and I’m not complaining, but you seemed to get a big hard-on because of my dirty knees” (here his lover growled a bit, or perhaps he was purring?) “and I think I have a right to know why.”  
  
Spike pulled him up into a sitting position and kissed his mouth hard, leaning up and over him until his head was completely bent back, resting in Spike’s strong hands. The kiss was serious but, when he pulled back, there was still that evil grin.  
  
“I’ll tell you, pet. I’ll tell you everything, _for a price_.”  
  
Xander held Spike's gaze, and reached out to unzip and unbutton a certain pair of black pants within his reach.  
  
“Everything?”  
  
But Spike batted his hands away. “Not here.” He pulled Xander up to his feet and began to lead him away.  
  
“ _Now_ what?” Xander groaned, feeling slightly put upon. A feeling which he quickly forgot when Spike began to run.


	2. With An Audience

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note:
> 
> "Elfleaf" is a folk name for, among other things, rosemary.  
> "St. Joseph's wort" is a folk name for basil (also known as "witchesherb")  
> Thus, when they burn their protective herbs, it might remind you of spaghetti sauce.
> 
> This Interesting Witchcraft Moment brought to you by, well, me.

Xander tried to keep up, he really did, but finding his way through the damp cemetery in the dead of night at a dead run wasn’t easy, and even if it was he could never keep up with _this_ dead man. But when he floundered Spike would actually _pick him up_ and run with him which he couldn’t stand, so he would demand to be put down and try his best.  
  
Finally, winded, wet and a little irritated, he found himself following Spike down to the last graves sitting beside the low stone wall, meaning they were on the west side of the cemetery. Spike stopped short between one shed-sized crypt, completely bare of vegetation, and other low marble block headstones. Xander sat heavily down on one and looked at what Spike was looking at …. the back of a large house Xander didn’t recognize, just beyond the stone border of the boneyard. Down past that was a quiet street that Xander’s internal map told him was Marsters Street, busy enough to still have occasional traffic, even at this late hour.  
  
As Xander caught his breath and waited for the burn to leave the muscles in his legs he took in the large house. The large plate-glass window with the curtains drawn showed a formal dining room, empty. Lights elsewhere in the house showed that someone was home, although, from his seat in the cemetery, it seemed quiet inside. There was no noise or movement from where he was sitting. It was an upscale house, and there were three upscale cars parked in the driveway. Lower than the rest of the cemetery, the run-off from the recent rain puddled in the driveway.  
  
“Who are the idiots who live here?” Xander asked when he was able. “More Sunnydale newbies?”  
  
“Oh no, that’s the Charms’ house. Lived in Sunnydale for years. GOOD looking girls, outa’ your league, Harris, right smart birds, they are.”  
  
“They live in _Sunnydale_ , and they live next to a _cemetery_. How smart can they be….what are you doing?”  
  
Spike pulled him off his marble seat and was leading him backward. The ground down here was too wet to sit on, so he sat them both down on the stone border of the crypt with his back against a monument and pulled Xander onto his lap, then spread his legs until Xander found himself sitting on the rock completely backed up into the other man’s crotch, legs bent at the knee pressing on both sides. In this position two strong, sure hands began caressing and massaging his chest with a will as Spike continued the story.  
  
“Oh, that lot’s safe enough. Grandmum was a powerful witch, no one dares enter the house. As long as they stay indoors after dark, and burn plenty of elfleaf ‘n St. Josephs wort. Nothing can hurt them in there.  
  
“But they’re trapped in there, see?” Spike was murmuring in his ear now, wicked hands worked their way under Xander’s shirt and began slowly, tenderly caressing his skin, his ribs, his abs, working their way shyly up to his pectorals. All the time Spike whispered in his best bedroom voice, his lips against Xander’s ear. It was like a slow, sweet seduction, as if they were on a first date, making it hard to remember that Xander had been butt-naked in the grass less than an hour ago shouting and coming into the Vampire’s mouth beneath the light of Venus.  
  
“They’re…..what?” Xander asked, trying to concentrate on the important information Spike was giving him while enjoying the tension slowly building as sly hands worked their way up his chest.  
  
“They’re trapped, oh it drives ‘em batty. They can’t leave Sunnydale, because their protection only works on them if they live here. And they can’t leave the house after dark, because the protection only works for 'em if they stay there. Oh, they hate it, those birds.”  
  
“So how…..” words were hard to come by, now, with Spike’s naughty hands now freely roaming over his nipples and massaging his chest, “….how do you know all this?”  
  
“Oi, every demon in TOWN knows it, pet. See that plate glass window, there? Lots'a mortals have met their end right there, we like t' tease them, we do. Took a bird there myself, I think, or maybe it was a wino…..”  
  
“Good Lord. What did they do?”  
  
“The dark-haired one came to the window and pulled the blinds, then turned the TV on. They don’t react, that’s for sure. So we creatures of the night get bored and leave them alone.”  
  
“So……you creatures of the night……entertain yourselves by……going to their big window and…..”  
  
“And showing off. Eternity’s a long time, mate. Gotta' do somethin' for laughs.”  
  
Xander was getting tired of Spike’s hands being pinned inside his wet shirt and was now stripping it off, heedless of being outdoors, heedless of the night air. But now (of course) Spike abandoned his chest and began massaging his inner thighs (oh GOD did that man know how to work tense muscles!)  
  
“So…..” Xander’s poor brain tried, tried HARD to think straight. He wanted the ‘dirty knees’ story, and somehow, SOMEHOW, he had to understand what his Vampire was trying to tell him. “So…. _why_ exactly are we here??”  
  
“Oh, pet.” Spike purred in his ear. “What’s the use of doin' it outside if there’s no one to _hear_ you?  
  
Xander could have turned around to face the amorous man behind him, but that might mean stopping the amorous hands from their mission (which seemed to be getting Xander rock-hard despite ALL the events of the evening.) Instead he leaned back into the hard, lean shoulder and stated “You, sir, are one sick twisted individual.” He could feel the grin break against his face. “ 'Allo, have we met? My name's Spike.”  
  
The hands now moved quite boldly under his ass, strong fingers massaging the muscles with such vigor he was almost lifting Xander into the air, while Xander was half-wondering if it were possible to melt right into the ground, and half wondering exactly what all this attention was buttering him up for.  
  
“Ok” he said, breathless, trying to sound casual, failing. He pulled the hands away suddenly and started to turn around. “I give up. What exactly are we doing?”  
  
Spike stood up suddenly and pulled Xander to his feet. He flattened himself against the mausoleum and jerked his boy to him, violently. “Shag me here, shag me here ‘n I’ll tell you everyth….”  
  
But who was telling whom what seemed irrelevant now as Xander slammed his lover’s head into the marble wall in a brutal kiss, running demanding (and dirty) hands roughly over smooth, alabaster skin. Spike gave as good as he got for a moment, then lay his head back to enjoy the onslaught. “Yeah, do it pet, do it….” he panted, breathless, grinning.  
  
 _Do it?_ Xander’s poor battered (and blood-deprived) brain reeled. _Do it?_ IN their whole history as lovers he had twice “shagged” Spike (his second time just hours ago) and both times it had been something that had *been done* to him, not something he *did*. Very strange, it seemed to Xander, that both times he had “topped” he had still been on the bottom.  
  
At a loss at how to begin and needing to buy time, Xander plunged one hand into his lover’s pants and boldly cupped what he found there, only to be nearly deafened by Spike shouting his name in ecstasy as loudly as possible. Irritated (and a little embarrassed, was it really necessary to call him “Alexander”??) Xander continued his violent movements, jerking the pants open and then, seized by a sudden inspiration, he forcefully turned the smaller man around and pushed him back the cold wall, jerked the pants down to his ankles baring the white ass to the world, dropped to his knees and _bit_ into one pale asscheek as hard as he dared.  
  
Spike, who had been calling out ridiculous endearments towards the direction of the house (what’s the point of doing it outside if you don’t have an audience?) was shocked into complete silence, causing Xander to repeat the action over and over again. Soon he had his lover gasping and moaning, jerking helplessly, almost _trembling_ (and completely forgetting about his “audience”) inspiring Xander in ways he didn’t think possible, his brain suddenly burning to do SOMETHING radical, ANYTHING to keep this moment going. He was vaguely aware of cars coming and going on the street behind him, headlights growing and fading in his periphery, the faraway sounds of civilization. Following a sudden urge (and ignoring all other thought or doubt) Xander split the cheeks and ran a tongue up the length of the hidden space between, once, twice. But Spike had stopped trembling, and his silent hisses were becoming low moans which were beginning to get louder, showier. Screwing up all his courage (and, to be honest, his face,) Xander spread apart the cheeks again forcefully, and, forcefully, thrust his tongue as deep into the puckered hole as he dared.  
  
The results were more than satisfying.  
  
Spike cried out wordlessly, breathlessly, honestly. It wasn’t silent, but it was sincere.  
  
Xander withdrew, stood, and turned his Vampire (now stumbling with pants around his ankles) back to face him, enjoying the wide eyes, the shocked expression. He pushed the face away and began biting and licking his way over the hollows of Spike’s neck, finally willing to let his victim recover his wits.  
  
He was going to need a few of those wits to tell him how to proceed.  
  
Spike was panting now, finding his voice, remembering English.  
  
“Holy God, Xander.”  
  
“Hey, _I’m_ not allowed to say that.”  
  
Cue shit-eating grin. “You gonna fuck me now, pet?”  
  
“Gonna try,” Xander said, despairing, then pulled away, looking around him desperately, looking for what he needed. More cars passed on the street. It vaguely registered in his brain that all the lights in the house next to them were on.  
  
“Come on,” he groaned, half leading, half dragging a stumbling Spike over to the marble block where he had been sitting before. Spike, all wicked smiles, trying to pull his pants up and walk at the same time, trying to cooperate, fell on his hands and knees onto the wet ground.  
  
A subservient position. A dog’s position.  
  
“Good GOD **no** ", Xander demanded, almost shouted, pulling him back up and leading him two more steps to the marble block headstone, pushing and prodding until he had Spike on his knees, hands on the block as if kneeling and praying to some insane god of Bizarre Vampire Outdoor Venus-sex. Xander pulled up right behind him, opening his fly and dropping his pants, pulling Spike by the waist to grind the bare ass against his groin. Cars passed on the street beside them, more lights appeared in the Charms’ house, and all of Xander’s courage drained out into the muddy ground.  
  
“Spike,” he gasped, “You know I don’t have the first clue….”  
  
But his teacher was already there. Leaning back, leaning into Xander’s arms, leaning his head back and catching the side of Xander’s face in one hand, pressing it to him, he whispered instructions.  
  
“You know what to do. Just like this, love,” he explained, pulling up Xander’s hand, taking his entire index finger into his mouth, wetting it with his tongue. “This first,” (here he moved the hand to press against his ass and moved his hips suggestively.) “Just do it. You can’t hurt me, pet, you’re not strong enough.” Xander inserted the finger boldly, enjoying the tightness of the giving muscles. Spike moaned encouragingly and bucked backwards while pulling up and mouthing the first two fingers of the other hand. Xander traded hands, pushing two fingers in, then copying his lover’s sign language , scissoring his fingers, turning his hand slightly. He was vaguely aware that Spike was starting the loud commentary again, calling him by his full name (and was there possibly movement in the formal dining room of the large house?) but Xander’s brain was too committed to doing this right, for taking the correct steps before burying himself for the second time that night into the cool insanity that was now grinding back into his hand.  
  
“Do me, Harris, yeah!” Spike was shouting, exuberant (more cars passed by on the street, plus what might have been a pick-up truck with windows open and frat-boys shouting.) One moment he was yelling for the world to hear, the next he was leaning back, crooning words, encouraging. “Perfect.” He grabbed up the hand and slathered two clean fingers quickly, wetting them as much as possible. “Last one, love, then do it.” Xander moaned and pushed the fingers to, then with a desperate prayer (are you up there, Venus? Are you listening?) he pointed the head of his cock at the secret place where his fingers were hidden….  
  
…..and allowed his more experienced lover to do the rest. The result was as smooth and graceful as two dancers moving in unison on a stage. Spike’s hands were on his thighs, pulling his closer, joining them together. Suddenly, irrationally, Xander felt _beautiful_ , molding himself into Spike’s lithe arching body, moving together under the stars.  
  
Hell, he almost hoped someone from the house _was_ watching.  
  
The graceful movements ended quickly, of course, and soon Xander found himself hanging onto Spike’s narrow hips for dear life, the stronger man bracing his hands against the stone and pounding him from in front, and he was reminded once again that shagging was something SPIKE did to HIM and never the other-way ‘round, no matter who was on the receiving end. Xander held on, head thrown back, looking into the starlit sky and gave himself over to something akin to religious ecstasy.  
  
Somewhere, Pan was watching.  
  
Anyone else could be watching too, and listening, but Xander was beyond thought now. Having sex in something close to public was never a kink of his (but Great Gods he was banging a damn _vampire_ , wasn’t that kink enough?) but the night air and the open sky and the sound of Spike’s voice in the night gave a razor-edge to the chills that were climbing up his arms, gave a silver taste to the fire climbing up his spine. He would have come and gone by now if he hadn’t already been drained by this unnatural-demon-in-a-god’s-body twice tonight, and he wasn’t sure, as his climax threatened, if coming one more time might not kill him. Of course, he didn’t quite care. Wild noises were echoing in the darkness, names shouted, deities invoked, and Xander was no longer sure where the noise was coming from. He only knew that it would be polite to warn his lover that the show was almost over.  
  
“I can’t stop, I can’t stop” was the best he could do, and Spike’s encouragement (“Yes, love, do it”) was all he needed to make it true. Cars, headlights, trapped smart birds in witch-protected houses were all witness to the sounds of one Alexander Harris, recent gay-virgin, coming for the third time with his lover following fast (head bowed, face hidden under long white arms) mud still drying on his knees.  
  
With a beautiful sensation pouring down his arms and legs, reaching all the way into his toes and fingertips, Xander wrapped his arms around the man in front of him and leaned into him to keep from collapsing. Soon his lover arose and, moving together, they managed to find a sitting position on the ground, panting, laughing. Holding. Xander’s hands shook with exhaustion and fatigue. Spike mistook the trembling for emotion and gathered his boy up in strong arms and held him, crooning, almost rocking, assuring him he had done everything right. Then another laugh brought Xander’s head up. Spike nodded toward the house that sat just outside the cemetery wall.  
  
The curtains were closed. A faint noise now came from the house…..probably the television. Turned up loud. Possibly watching Law and Order. Spike nodded again towards the chimney, where smoke was rising. “Smell,” he whispered, and Xander breathed it in. “Smells like spaghetti,” he wondered breathlessly. “Elfleaf and St Joseph's wort,” Spike chuckled. “Oh, they’re mad at us now.”  
  
“You, sir,” Xander whispered, voice as rough as if he had been recently shouting, “Are one sick and twisted individual.”  
  
“And you love me,” Spike purred back.  
  
Xander clenched his jaw to keep from speaking, but what he would have said he did not know.  
  
\-----------------------------------------------------------  
 __  
  



	3. Confess Treasured Secrets

Bedraggled from the mud and grass, still getting wet from the occasional dripping tree, Spike and Xander worked their way back up and across the cemetery in a companionable silence, picking their way through muddy patches and broken graves and occasionally gaping holes, sometimes talking, sometimes, absurdly, holding hands.  
  
“SO, you got yours, now give me mine…..NO, I mean you promised to tell me why muddy knees are a big turn-on for Vampires.”  
  
“Not Vampires, love, just me.” Then he told his pet the story.  
  
“When my Drusilla made me she hid me away in the basement of a nice Dutch family what took her in, thinking her a mystic. She told their futures, saved them from some troubles, gave them money to pay all their bills and then killed them in their sleep. They had such pretty clothes, they did, what fit me ‘n ‘er. So she’d dress up all right proper, see, and she’d dress me proper too, and she’d kiss me and leave. (She kept me indoors, see, then she’d go and ‘n feed ‘n come back to feed me.)”  
  
“I thought you said a new Vampire couldn’t eat just one thing.”  
  
“Most can’t. Most Master Vampires aren’t strong enough to do it. She was strong, and I was strong. I was hungry, yeah, I was _starving_ , but I didn’t care. She was my dark princess and she was all I wanted. I bloody **loved** that girl.”  
  
He looked off into the distance then, and Xander saw his face relax, saw the expression that meant he was far away and in another time.  
  
“So,” Xander said finally, gently. “Muddy knees?”  
  
“Oi, yeah,” Spike said suddenly. “My Dru, she’d come back by dawn, just fed, full of life and power. And _filthy_. Two muddy circles on her dress, where she’d been on her knees, ah...." Spike's voice was now taking the far-away note Xander had seen in his face. "Her hands a fright where she had been digging in the mud, _**cor**_ she loved to be on her hands and knees in the hedgerow stalking her prey like some animal. Angelus and Darla never understood, no, they’d scold her and beat her for spoiling her dresses. _Angelus._ He’d punish her for what she was when it was him what made her so. But that was Angelus. Wanted it all proper and clean, he did.  
  
“You need to understand, pet, no……” he thought for a moment. “No, you can’t.”  
  
“What? Yeah I can, just tell me.”  
  
“You can’t understand, Xander, how can you? You’ve never been dirty a full day of your life. Even when you were in your nappies you were bathed day and night, and your mum with you.”  
  
“What?” Xander, still covered in mud, jeans ruined, walking beside a barefoot Vamprie with an open shirt and chest covered in muddy handprints, heard the words as an attack on his manhood. “I’m in the construction business, pal. What do you think I do for a living?” He stepped in front of Spike suddenly, pressing his callused (and still muddy) hands to Spike exposed chest, pressing against the impossibly soft skin ( _cor_ how he loved that soft skin.) “I’ll have you know I come home filthy.”  
  
“Bollocks. You come home dirty and jump in the shower, then climb in your clean bed under your clean sheets with your clean lady. And all without the employ of one servant – not one!”  
  
He walked past a slightly irritated Xander and continued the walking lecture.  
  
“Now in my day, keepin’ clean was a full time job, ‘less you had servants, which you had to have to keep things clean for you. Then they could keep themselves clean along with you and everyone stayed clean together. Clean meant you had money, see? Clean meant you were upperclass, not to be looked down on. That’s why Angelus couldn’t take his Childe coming in all bedraggled like that, but me….  
  
“Oh I _loved_ my Dru. I worshipped her. She was like a wildchild of the woods, like a Druidess, like a Pagan Priestess. She’d come to me with soiled knees ‘n soiled hands and muddy face, alive and hot and _real_ and BLOODY HELL was she ready for a shag! She’d feed me and I’d worship my Goddess for hours……”  
  
Again, the face relaxed and looked off into the distance. They were at the east end of the cemetery, the stone wall border in sight. The story seemed to be over.  
  
“So that’s it, pet.” Spike said suddenly. “Muddy knees. Do it for me every time.”  
  
They walked in silence for a moment, working around a sad, soggy pile of discarded grave decorations, molding flora and plastic wreaths of sodden flowers, Xander mentally digesting what he had been told. They didn’t speak until they came to the other side.  
  
“Jealous?” Spike asked quietly, watching his face.  
  
“Hmmm? Oh no, I was thinking WHOA….” He protested when Spike casually lifted up his whole body and carried him over a large mud puddle, walked over three broken headstones then leapt to the top of the low stone wall that marked the edge of the cemetery.  
  
“You don’t need to _carry_ me around,” he scolded, trying to find his footing at the top of the wall, but Spike only smirked. He wrapped his arms around Xander’s waist tightly and grinned up into his boy’s face, and his boy held on to his shoulders and frowned back.  
  
"I'll never forget this, love. Never forget it was me what did you out-of-doors, did it first."  
  
"I'll never forget it either," Xander found himself whispering against his lover's mouth. He couldn't help adding, "It was too weird."  
  
“What were you thinking, love?” Spike said, picking his boy up again and gently lowering him until he was standing on the ground on the other side of the wall, outside the cemetery, back in the real world.  
  
“I was wondering,” Xander said, looking up at Spike who now towered three feet above him. “Muddy knees made Drusilla randy, and so it made you randy. I was trying to decide who’s kink it was first, but then I remembered that when you’re sharing blood it doesn’t really matter. They tend to mesh together.”  
  
Spike looked at him seriously for a moment, then squatted and put out his hand. Xander stepped into his reach. Spike hooked a tender finger beneath his chin and tilted his head all the way back, and Xander submitted to a gentle kiss in a pose that came right out of a romance-novel cover. (Xander grinned and wondered if it was a bodice-ripper.)  
  
Spike smiled back. “We shared a few dirty thoughts, too, if I recall," he murmured, casually caressing one thumb over Xander’s mouth. "Want I should come back to your place? We could figure out whose dirty thoughts were whose, I’m sure there’s a few more what we haven’t tracked down yet…..”  
  
“ **NO,** no no. Nope. I’ve been dirty enough tonight. I’m going home and take a nice long hot shower for granted.”  
  
“Sweet dreams, love,” Spike said with a wicked grin. Xander winked, turned, and walked away.  
  
Spike was watching him walk, he knew it. He kept up the casual saunter until the end of the block, then he turned and sauntered left onto the next street.  
  
When he was out of sight of the cemetery he began to run.  
  
He jogged, he sprinted, he did the shit-demon-gonna-eat-me white-boy run until his lungs were about to burst, then slowed down to a jog again. He told himself he was trying to get home quickly (he had been out later than usual) but that was far from the truth. He ran in hopes that the burning in his lungs, the burning in his muscles would distract him from the burning in his brain.  
  
It didn’t work.  
  
...Drusilla, her pretty dresses, her insane life, her gentle loving sex-charged transformation of William into the Vampire who lost his shit at the sight of dirty kneecaps, meeting the Angel that expelled him from paradise (did he have a flaming sword? Ewww...)  
  
When did this whole Sex-With-Spike thing become so damn _intimate_?

Xander knew things about Spike that Buffy would never know, hell, things he wasn’t sure **Drusilla** knew, and sure as hell not Angel. He had the horrible feeling he was buried deeper in this demon’s head than the Initiative Chip, and if he was in THIS deep, where the hell was Spike? When would the Big Bad know him better than his ex-demon lady-love? THAT was the problem, oh yes. “Aye, there’s the rub” as Spike would say...

At some point this whole thing started to feel less and less like :Crazy Hellmouth Shit" and more _and more like a plain old " **affair**."_  
  
Which meant Xander wasn’t a Victim of Glory (by Extension,) oh no.

That meant Xander was flat out cheating on his girlfriend... hell... on his freaking FUTURE FIANCEE.  
  
“Nononono” Xander was telling his burning brain, “I didn’t bring him back to the house, we only do it in his underground crypt and occasionally in the cemetery under the light of Venus, that counts for something, right?” Of course it counted. It had been so damn _hard_ to turn Spike down just now, so goddamn _tempting_ to invite the man home and sort out which dirty thoughts were which. It would feel so _good_ to take Spike into his shower, push him against the wall and act out a few fantasies there, suck him off in the spray, fuck him silly until the hot water ran out…….then compare notes afterwards. _Did you ever see this one in your head? Did you see this one? Did you like it?_  
  
Xander was standing outside his apartment building, trying to catch his breath, wishing the muscles in his legs were burning just a little bit more, his ribs aching just a little more, wondering if he should run another lap around the block.  
  
“This will be over soon, this will end soon, this will disappear soon and you’ll wonder what the hell you were thinking, soon the fights will start up again or the world will end or the bloodclaim will just wear off and you’ll be fine.”  
  
_Keep saying it, Donut Boy. Keep saying it and maybe it will become true._  
  
Xander went inside his empty apartment and took a long, hot shower. But he did not take it for granted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What comes next is The Dream.
> 
> You may find it... strange. But in contains answers.
> 
> Well... maybe "questions" more than "answers" but it is still part of the journey. Be sure to subscribe to the series so you won't miss an update.
> 
> Enjoy.

**Author's Note:**

> Remember - feedback makes Author post chapters quicker...


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